Category Archives: ice cream

a few weeks back, the kid and i thought it would be a good idea to roadtest the coppa di gelati at brunetti, a sundae for two to share. it was only on for the summer, and the summer was fast tumbling to its end. i wonder if many coppe had crossed the pass in three months — it had been spruiked on the brunetti facebook page, but the only onsite publicity was a small placard on the counter, turned halfway to the wall. even the countergirl was momentarily confused when we ordered one.

but she seemed excited, and asked us to sit while she prepared it. “it will be a few minutes,” she said. so we sat and waited, and watched — amused — as she walked back and forth between the gelato outpost and the main cafe section to fetch the necessary ingredients: a special dish, a couple punnets of fresh berries… at one point, even the guy from the drinks station was summoned with his siphon of whipped cream. we’d picked the berry coppa (there were two others to choose from, on the themes of “chocolate” and “nuts”).

the kid was excited as well, dancing before the counter to watch the scooping of gelato and the assemblage of… well, you shall see. after quite a few minutes, the countergirl walked slowly to our table, bearing a silver tray. she seemed at once reverent, and proud. she’d done a great job! we may even have applauded.

so. here we have five scoops of ice cream and sorbet: raspberry, strawberry, berry cheesecake and vanilla. whipped cream, berries, coulis, wafers. maraschino cherries. we ate it so quickly, matching each other spoonful for spoonful. in the glow of late afternoon sunshine, it was gone much too soon.

it’s a crazy notion, of course, that a sundae should be just a summer fling. surely a judicious curation of stewed fruit, crumbled cookie crumbs and warm sauces in a coppa would see us safely through the winter.

choukette, down the road, plies a trade in little french treats. a black sesame macaron is a fine treat on any given day, pleasingly chewy with its buttercream filling all subtly nutty. (a rose macaron is also a fine treat, as is one filled with salted butter caramel…)

but what of the chouquettes, for which the shop is named? you can get a dozen in a large paper bag, corners twisted as they do in paris (i imagine), for five dollars, and you can eat them as you head back up the street. they are just balls of choux pastry, dotted with large sugar crystals, but they are strangely compelling. by the second set of lights, you will suddenly realise that you’ve gobbled down four.

stop.

save some for when you get home. slice them open, and fill them with ice cream and berries. i suppose it defeats the purpose of a simple little pastry, but daymn, it makes for a perfect mouthful — surely the finest treat that day.

the kid turned seven during the week. se7en! i’d thought i might have a new kitchen in by today, or at least new kitchen cabinets, but no. in fact, i had no kitchen, and no cabinets — just a big empty room with an assortment of wires and pipes sticking out of the walls, and several large holes in said walls where the previous beige tiles and their grey grout — and occasional blue and yellow chequerboard accents — had been gouged out.

still, it was a good day for a party.

it is important when one has no kitchen, to plan a party with minimal cooking. actually, no cooking whatsoever. my party prep in the morning involved emptying bags into bowls, and the cursoriest bit of cutting up fruit. probably should have emptied a couple more bags; the gummy lollies — two bowls by this stage — were the first to go.

fun activities of the night before, after removing the last vestiges of debris from the ex-kitchen, included making pizza bunting for the backyard clothesline. you see, it was a pizza party!

the kids were herded out back for a spot of pizza craft — a free flow of red paint in lieu of passata, a stack of sticky circles and origami paper, some tubes of glitter and a bowl of spangles, and six rounds of cardboard. there were crayons too, but they melted in the late morning sun.

i ordered three of domino’s finest over the phone, and then i joined in the crafty mayhem. here is my neat and tidy sausage and mushroom pizza:

and here is the freeform expression of a wild-and-spirited guest, who started off with a pretty conventional pizza, and then painted over the lot with red, and then most of a bottle of craft glue, and then stuck to it as many sheets of coloured paper and circle stickers as she could:

it’s all in the process, innit? amazing.

and then i scrubbed the thick circle of gluey paint and fairy dust off the table, just in time for the pizza delivery.

there was cake after, of course, after the aforementioned wild-and-spirited guest scaled the cubby house and then the fence, and danced provocatively upon the neighbour’s shed. a rainbow ice cream cake which made another girl sad because she doesn’t like ice cream, and whose candles were prematurely blown out by the wild-and-spirited guest and had to be relit…

nonetheless, i think it probably worked out in the end. happy birthday, kid!

so we snuck back to sydney for a few days last week, the kid and i. we made the spur-of-the-moment trip ostensibly to visit family, though in actual fact, there was a large flashing billboard in my head, and writ large upon it was the word “messina”. still, for much of the week we played happily north of the bridge, walking through the hills and vales of cherrybrook, and the malls of the greater northern suburbs.

and then on friday, after a bus ride into the city and a ferry ride across the twinkly harbour and a walk down the memory lane that is oxford street, we met up with one d rodrigo for lunch at honeycomb. i’d only read about this new cafe a few days before, and while you’re in another city, it may register as merely a blip, but when you find yourself suddenly within — well, who knows how many hours, given public transport from the hills district — when you find yourself contemplating luncheon at sopra because it was probably your favourite place in sydney, then it seems the only logical conclusion that you end up at honeycomb, new home of old sopra chef andy bunn.

the waitstaff were all smiles and welcomes when we showed up just past 2.30, and gave us our pick of the empty dining room; the kitchen closes at 3! from the all-day breakfast menu the kid picked waffles with mascarpone, honey, and that rarest of fruits — the banana. d and i went an altogether more grown-up route.

off the main menu, we shared a generous dish of orecchiette with prawns, salty little nubblets tasting of the sea. the pasta was perfectly cooked, the riotous confetti of chilli and herbs as festive on the tongue as it was on the plate.

after a brief discussion about whether a lamb ragu would be too much for 3pm on a sunny day, we also picked the kingfish served with boiled fennel and salsa verde. under its golden crust the simply seasoned fish was meaty, a suitable canvas for a smear of the salty, tangy green sauce (though i expect i would’ve been perfectly happy to eat the salsa straight from the spoon). the cucumber ribbons and sprigs of watercress made the whole package a gift of springtime.

ambitiously, we split a salad off the specials list: oyster mushrooms with ricotta and potatoes in a tumble of leaves. it didn’t offer too much of a photo opportunity, but the salty slippery mushrooms, fried a little bit crisp around the edges, and the little daubs of creamy cheese, and the tantalising shards of witlof, more than made up for it in the mouth.

and then we were done! happy and satiated.

and we wondered, could we still do dessert? we waddled up the hill for a bit, and found our way to the cool, dim oasis that is gelato messina, where the gelato is always piled high, and there are always more flavours than you can safely consume in one sitting, even on the end of a tasting stick.

i did sample the cucumber sorbet, an impossibly smooth and slightly tangy whisper of cool speckled green, but gave in to a single scoop of almond croissant gelato. the subtly fragrant almond milk base was most agreeable, as were the pockets of almond frangipane from the housemade almond croissants. the bits of croissant pastry, however, had become chewy from the moisture, and were not a joy to eat. alas.

still, it was with a golden glow in my heart (and belly) as we wandered off into the sunset. somehow it has come to be that messina is the thing i pine for most when i think of sydney. i’d like to think it’s the really good thing that represents an amalgamation of harbour ferry rides, and good friends, and favourite aunts… not just the really good thing that might send your blood sugar just beyond desirable limits for the afternoon.

i’m getting that feeling now, of having to cram the sydney experience into the short time left we have in this fair city. in the last four months, for example, we have been to the maltese cafe on crown street, thrice. that’s a lot of pastizzi.

i should perhaps have introduced the kid to this hallowed bastion of crunchy little pastries a little earlier. i used to come here back in the 90s, when i laid out pop magazines up the street, and the whole artroom would break out at lunchtime and split a plate of pastizzi. good times.

it’s nice sitting here, in this slightly shabby room, with an assortment of savoury (and sweet) pastries before you. it will please you to note that the china is heavy and, crucially, mismatched.

15 years ago, the pastizzi were 30 or 40c a piece, and you could feed three hungry flying monkeys for just over $5. now, one pastizz will set you back $1.50. no matter. the decor is still mostly 15-years-ago, and besides what can you get for a dollar-fiddy these days?

on her first visit, the kid was surprised to find that the mushrooms in the chicken and mushroom pastizzi were distinctly inoffensive. by her third visit, it was her standard order.

i do like the cheese and spinach pastizzi, with its light and slightly tangy filling, and i’ve also been reacquainting myself with the stodgy delight of the pea pastizzi, stuffed with the best murky-green tinned mushy peas. all the more delicious dipped into the intense tomato sauce (remember? you used to be able to order “a bit” of sauce, or “a bowl”.)

the apple pastizzi, filled with sweet stewed apples and sprinkled in sugar, is a treat in itself, but on our outings the kid understands it is to be eaten for dessert, only after she is finished with the meaty one.

we ordered a couple of ricotta and blueberry ones the first time round, but it was rather heavier on ricotta than it need to be (and consequently, somewhat lighter on the berries).

the pastries are always hot, and if you are lucky enough to have it straight out of the oven, the friendly man behind the counter will caution you that it is especially hot. oh, delicious crunchy flaky pastry.

the last time we were there, this saturday past, the kid said, “i LOVE this place. i think that we cannot move to melbourne anymore.” i know exactly what she means. round the corner, some well-stenciled graffiti reminds me why coming to surry hills feels a little bit like home.

and the sydney experience continues. the maltese cafe is just far enough away from gelato messina that the stroll down oxford street then victoria street will make it possible to have a delightful second dessert (or y’know just dessert if you were sensible enough not to have apple pastizzi at lunchtime).

last saturday there were so many new flavours that i had to have a three-scoop cup just to feel like i wasn’t missing out. in case this ended up being the last time i got to come to messina (probably not though), i finally indulged my fond memory of the coconut-lychee gelato. it was just as wonderful as i remembered.

i had a small taste of the sprightly and refreshing pink grapefruit and aperol sorbet — “hello sailor!”, it was called — but decided that i’d have to have the peach and amaretti. oh! it was peachy, and studded with crunchy chunks of crumbled biscuits.

a scoop of rosewater and almond praline gelato in the most agreeable shade of pink rounded out the selection. the delicate hue echoed the very faint flavour of rose, which seemed overshadowed by the aggressively crunchy candied almonds.

the kid had her own yoghurt and berry cone, and nursed it by the plate glass window in the back, utterly fascinated by the freshly churned gelato coming out of the machine in the kitchen. we watched as they dispensed cherry, and then coconut, and then once the coconut was all done, the gelato man came out front to the counter and proferred a cone of it to the kid.

we ambled out then, back into the sun, towards more sydney experience (pumpkin sourdough at infinity, a modest selection of chocolatey treats at kakawa, and then a stroll through hyde park for a gander at the archibald fountain). the coconut gelato was impossibly smooth and lush.

it is nice to see that there is order in other parts of my world. my immediate surrounds are teetering piles of papers and magazines, some destined for new homes, some headed for the great recycling bin in the sky, some — the tiniest little scraps, really — are somehow imbued with great sentimental value, and languish in the purgatory of my lounge room rug, waiting…

but the ceremonial red folding chairs were arranged just so last wednesday in the rather lovely leichhardt town hall, and the leichhardt celebrity brass band were resplendent in bright yellow, as i, amongst sixty others with interesting — if not purely long and challenging — names, became citizens of australia. yes, i have only been here since 1989, but here, as the mayor said, is where my migrant journey ends.

it was a jolly ceremony, with pop classics up front, and advance australia fair coming up the end, with friendly words, a pledge of allegiance and a gift of a baby tree in-between. the mayor, in his ceremonial, fur-lined robes, was proud to boast the live band — bugles! trombones!! — accompanying the national anthem, the made-in-australia flags which were handed out to all inductees, and the lamingtons in the back of the hall for the post-ceremonial reception.

and what lamingtons! first of all, they were huge. secondly, there were moist, with a good coating of rich chocolate and coconut. thirdly, there were enough that i managed to have three of them.

yes. the third one was actually surrendered by the kid a few bites in after she realised that she only liked the idea of having a second lamington. immediately upon handing it over, she started making eyes at the last remaining custardy fruit tart on the table. at this point, i steered her towards the door…

and on to dinner. what better way to celebrate becoming an aussie than to stuff oneself with italian food? the most mediocre of italian food, even. we were privileged to have ms d as witness to the naturalisation, and pleased to dine together at a laminate table in the balmy courtyard out the back of bar italia.

i have not been to dinner at bar italia for the longest time. some years ago, i ordered off the non-pasta dinner menu, and the size of the piece of broccoli which accompanied the meat stuck in my head for evermore.

when the food arrived, i was overwhelmed by the wonderful aroma of cake. i thought it was a nearby flat white, but once i started eating my veal marsala, it became clear that the sweet smell was coming from my plate. it was an enormous serve of soft meat in brown gravy — just as i remembered, and look at that broccoli! — but what had escaped my memory, and perhaps the dish has changed over the years, was that the sauce was so sweet that the meat seemed to be coated in caramel syrup. i thought the kid might like it, but she was quite repulsed. i expect it was the confusion of candied meat.

(but where was the problem? she likes candy, she likes meat, she likes bakkwa…)

we had a garden salad (dressed with the finest — not! — bottled dressing, ah memories of youthful folly) and a large bowl of chips (very nicely cooked, but so aggressively salted in parts that it hurt to eat them), and after it was all gone, we sought to right the wrongs (so wrong they were right, kind of) by eating copious amounts of gelati.

it’s insane how much gelati they can scoop into a flimsy plastic cup at bar italia. i was slow in naming my flavours so much of the cup was filled with an almost savoury, full-of-nutty-bits pistachio. the counter boy made up for it by piling the bounty gelato into a large cloud above the rim of the cup.

it was very moreish, unfortunately, packed with shredded coconut and a number of dark chocolate shards. unfortunate, because after the meat and veg, and salad and chips, and yes, the three lamingtons, i could eat no more.

here’s one for the album: eating my first lamington as a new australian (all the while keeping my eye on my second lamington).

we blinked as we re-entered the sunny sunday. we’d been hiding out in the dim cavern that is the london BMI IMAX cinema, wearing dark glasses, stretching our hands out towards the floating cheshire cat. “alice in wonderland”, in 3D, was a rollicking rollercoaster ride — in spite of the curious bit of freaky styley dancing at the end — but after a couple of contraband movie snacks, we were ready for the main event.

a short way across town, upstairs at fortnum and mason, there is a restaurant called, the parlour. it’s a decadent ice cream shoppe straight out of the 50s with a baroque (rococo?) sensibility. there they will serve you a sandwich, or a salad, and you will order one or the other — or both — and it will be a competent affair. however, you will know that it is only a little something to prepare your stomach for what is to follow.

it certainly made an impact as it arrived at the table, served in an enormous pink goblet of heavy cut glass. such fun! all those bits of crumbly meringue! multiple biscuits! a veritable cloud of whipped cream! the taste of strawberries through everything was quite lovely, but perhaps in the end, the overall impression was just that it was… nice.

which is not a bad thing, certainly, and i did not complain as i ate the lot. but i think the ice cream could have been better: more luscious, a little less frosty in parts.

more, in fact, like the coupe we had at afternoon tea not quite a week later and just a couple of blocks down, at the wolseley. i wish i had a picture to show you, but their no-photo policy is stark on the front page of their menu. you will just have to believe me when i tell you that the combination of crushed meringue, lemon curd and lemon yoghurt ice cream, whipped cream and flaked almonds makes for a very luscious sundae indeed. i think of it still, with a sigh, this pale yellow beauty in a frosty silver bowl.

aside from the lemon meringue coupe, we also had a perfunctory round of afternoon tea (a three-tiered tray to share between four) and a slice of treacle tart, which was light and lemony, and possessed none of the sickly sweetness that you might expect. the pastry was just perfect, and the filling, pleasantly sticky, well, that was perfect too. my mother — quite out of character — must have had four, if not five, mouthfuls of it, and i feared i might have to stab her with my fork to get her to stop.

such blissful eating amidst the bustle — a constant stream of tea-takers swarmed through the restaurant, but the waitress never hurried us along. for a moment, this little stretch of banquette seating under the high ceilings and marble pillars, it felt like home.

we were only scheduled to be in london for 10 days, until eyjafjallajökull erupted and gave us a bit of a bonus extra holiday. before then, we operated on a strict program that had been planned and refined over the preceding months, via a very comprehensive spreadsheet. with first day brunch at ottolenghi done and dusted, we found ourselves on the train, richmond-bound, for second day lunch at petersham nurseries.

out of the station, we walked down the high street to get there, and along the river, and through a muddy paddock, and up a dusty driveway, and through a little of the nursery, and arrived in good time to be shown to our table in a large tentish room with a dirt floor (a tent festooned with enormous bunches of fresh flowers, and strewn with mismatched furniture of varying vintage). my sister thought it was important that we have bread and butter, and lemonade, and quick! and then there they were.

the menu was streamlined – just three options for each course — and according to one of the nicest waitresses in the world, might change from day to day depending on produce available. friday, i was lucky enough to have…

fried artichokes with a caper and mint dressingsuch a riot of crispy edges and zingy flavours! such a joyous jumble of leaves! the play of textures was fun indeed as i mix-matched artichoke outsides (brown and crunchy as chips) and insides (pale, soft, and mildly tangy) with capers and lemon juice and minced-up mint leaves that no doubt found their way into all the crevices of my teeth. smile!

grilled sardines with aioliyou know, it looked modest on the plate, and felt light to eat it — all those lemony, fish oily flavours — but golly, i was stuffed when i was done. the sardines were plump and moist, and the sauteed chard yielding, and the lovely dollop of aioli — so full in the mouth, i only needed a little dab on each forkful of fish, and made it last right ’til the end.

almond tartwe had been excited to read it on the menu, and gleeful to see it at the table — this sturdy wedge of pastry with the lazy slurp of cream and candied orange syrup. it was even pleasing to eat, but alas, in the end, the crunchy pastry shell filled with dense frangipane, rough-hewn nuts and rind completely vanquished us. we probably would have appreciated it more on its lonesome, with a big cup of tea, and not the legacy of three fat sardines and as many crisp-fried artichokes.

stracciatella ice creamtruly, the surprise winner of the show. the ice cream — presented in a heavy drinking glass — was super premium, rich and creamy, and served at exactly the right, just melty temperature. mixed very generously into this were more bits of good dark chocolate than you’d think necessary, or possible. the ice cream makes its way down your throat, and then the shards of chocolate melt away and linger on your tongue. blissful, it was, even when the pain of distended belly kicked in. i could not stop eating this.

it looks simple, does it not? this food? there was nothing extraneous on the plate; each course just a tumble of a few flavours, and no adornment except for its necessary elements. but it all looked beautiful, and tasted much more wonderful than what you might expect from such spare plating. everything that could be eaten — with the exception of the noble almond tart — was.

they serve coffee from a cafetière here, or any number of floral infusions. no, not a single normal tea, grumble. so i picked mint from the list recited by the waitress, and was brought a comforting pot of green. a fine way to conclude a meal in the middle of a garden centre on a sunny springtime afternoon.

they’ve changed the tables (and chairs) since i was last at messina. the stools are now handsome bentwood affairs, and the tables are shiny oversized metal trays set precariously on spindly tripods (all the better, i suppose, to see how you look as you gorge yourself on the product).

the gelati, of course, is as delicious as ever. i still think about the triple chocolate extravaganza i had on my birthday last year. sigh… there are always more flavours on display than i know what to do with, and late this afternoon, barely two hours after weed strudel and exotic cream cake, i thought it might be unwise to have more than, ahem, two.

we were meeting with the artist formally known as “the little matchboxgirl” for a gelato date, and by coincidence found ourselves on the same bus hurtling out of the city towards darlinghurst. the kid rummaged in her handbag for a comic she had made specially for the occasion, and was quite matter-of-fact when sonya immediately handed her a baggie full of tiny tchotkes in exchange. a little later at the shop, maeve sidled up to me and offered, sotto voce, “i like sonya.”

the kid is mostly guided by colour when it comes to icy desserts. sometimes she will surprise me with a left-of-field request for passionfruit or green tea, or — once, confoundingly — mint-chip, but more often than not, it’s a choice between this pink one or the other. this time she picked the only pink available: raspberry.

i always want a scoop of coconut and lychee at messina, but there is always something new i want to try that won’t match, and so i have spent the last few years coconut-and-lychee-less. this time i picked burnt fig jam, walnut and mascarpone because i thought i ought to, for research, and pavlova because it looked so cheery. you may argue that those two flavours do not match, but anyway.

it wasn’t surprising that the fig, walnut and mascarpone gelato was figgy, and walnutty, and extremely rich and creamy from the mascarpone… truly it was a proper grown-up flavour with undertones of seriousness. by comparison, the pavlova gelato was light and charming, milky with highlights of tart berries and tangy passionfruit.

in a cruel twist of fate, sonya did choose the coconut-lychee, but began by eating the chocolate fondant. i’ve had that chocolate fondant gelato; it means business! it fills your mouth with a voluptuous chocolatiness, and once you eat it, you can’t really have anything else in the same sitting. and so it came to pass that the scoop of coconut-lychee sat forlorn in the paper cup as the kid and sonya merrily swapped ballet stories in the balmy breeze.

what a long, terribly hot summer it’s been. our fault, i suppose, for spending most of it in sunny melbourne. on the most horrible day, we took shelter in the airconditioning of the arts centre; my plan was to see as much of the AC/DC exhibition as the kid would allow. except that we found ourselves drowning in a deluge of pink tulle. turns out it was fifteen minutes away from the lunchtime matinee of the angelina ballerina show, and hundreds of little girls in ballet dress-ups swarmed the lobby. the kid turned her large limpid eyes my way; the temperature in the street was the wrong side of 40; i handed over my credit card, and spent the next hour or so sitting in a sea of battery-operated glowsticks, watching lithe, human-sized mice dance across the stage.

but the temperature kept climbing, and at 1.40 in the wee hours of the morning, i woke up stifled. i poured myself down the hallway, and had a cold shower, and eventually got back to sleep. later we were to find out it was hovering in the lower-mid-40s all night, and when the temperature finally dropped at about 8am, it was to a refreshing 34°C.

ugh.

so we went out in search of icy treats, often. the lemon-lime and bitters sorbet at trampoline was truly delightful. a very fetching shade of palest pink which dissolved gracefully into a gentle citrusy tang on my tongue. i liked it so much i went back for more.

there was the emergency slurpee from a hole-in-the-wall 7-eleven one afternoon in the melty city, and a golden gaytime krusher at KFC one sunday when nothing else was open in shimmery rural victoria. it was a most unappetising shade of… bilge, a pale and lumpy yellow in the plastic tumbler, that tasted better than it looked, until it warmed up to room temperature.

and then, holy moley, there was the organic cinnamon donut gelato from fritz gelato at the souf melbourne markets. lush and milky with a streak of sticky red jam all the way through. behold its majestic crest sitting atop an enormous scoop of caramelised fig and roasted almond yoghurt gelato, equally lush and milky, and filled with crunchy little fun bits of seeds and nuts and burnt sugar. good times…

and then we came back to sydney, and the holidays galloped to a close, and the kid grew up and went off to school. no tears were shed from anyone involved.